RNS-E MP3 Manager - Freeware Release

Over the past six months I've been working on some software that manages your MP3 tracks on the RNS-E. The idea came about from seeing lots of posts on this forum about how best to manage tracks and playlists on SD cards with the RNS-E, as well as myself wanting to automate a lot of the process.

This idea rapidly snowballed and now I've created a Windows-based application called RNS-E MP3 Manager, that performs the following:

- Rips tracks from audio CDs into MP3s at all bit rates with tag editing using the acclaimed LAME encoder;
- Uses the freedb.org website to automatically offer artist, album and track titles for the ripped tracks;
- Organises tracks into M3U playlists, with the MP3s stored in a folder on the root of the SD card, and the playlist on the root for the RNS-E to play;
- Has a "one-click" process, where - assuming a CD is in your default CD drive and an SD card placed inside a reader (marked as a removable drive in Windows) - all the tracks will be ripped, named, added to a playlist and then copied to the SD card.

The user interface appears on the screen as the RNS-E itself, with all the controls inside what is the screen (note that the RNS-E buttons are blanked out - they may well be used in a future release!):

Using SourceForge.net, I've created a project on it from which you can download version 1.0.1 (four of my friends/colleagues have helped debug 1.0.0!). This is a Beta release, which means that it is working but may still contain faults. I'm keen for people to try it out and post any feedback, ideas or report any bugs. There are also six HTML help pages provided, but it is very straightforward to use. On SourceForge there is a bug tracking facility and forum to provide this, or you can post here and I will continue to check this thread. Bug fixes are the priority right now, but I'll do my best to incorporate any new features people think of and then newer releases will be provided.

The source code for 1.0.1 is also available on this site. If anyone here is experienced in writing applications in Visual Basic 6.0, and wants to get involved, please PM me and I can set you up as a developer on SourceForge for this project.

PLEASE NOTE: This is not commercial software. It is a freeware project and as such is completely free to download and use but at your own risk.

- The drag/drop Tracks feature into the Playlist window was not working. Now corrected;
- Add multiple tracks from the Add Tracks file/folder browser (using either the CTRL or SHIFT keys and clicking each file);
- Track shuffle feature within the Playlist included for the first time.

At the time of writing there has been 135 downloads of my application which is great, but precious little feedback - if you have any thoughts, please share them!

Downloaded your RNS-E manager, currently getting a runtime error 71 when I try and transfer to my sdcard saying disk not ready

Click to expand...

Cheers for the feedback. How do you access your SD card? Do you use a USB reader or is it built into your computer? You could also try formatting first before clicking Transfer - it must be in FAT32 format.

The only thing I can think of right now is that your SD card isn't recognised as a Windows removable drive, which the application checks.

SDCard is via USB reader which are in my monitor, slots are seen as Removeable drives, card is currently formatted as FAT32, reformatted it last night on removal of card from system to try your app, cards are 4gb cards

Several users have reported problems during the installation and, in an attempt to rule out problems with the MSI Wise installer, I have produced a standard installer using Microsoft's own Package and Deployment wizard that ships with VB6.

If you have already installed V1.0.3 previously and have errors when using it, then please download this ZIP. Once downloaded, extract it to a folder and double-click the setup.exe file. Make sure no other applications are running. It should install over the existing application but I'm hoping that the DLLs are correctly copied and registered.

If you attempt this, please post feedback here so we can see if it is successful!

Hi, I'm trying to download your RNS-E MP3 manager but having no joy. It keeps coming up with errors when trying install.It comes up with several questions about some files being older thans ones already installed then after that it says theres any error when installing this file 'system32/msxml.dll'.
Any ideas?
Thanks

I've definitely had it working on XP (32 bit) SP3 one CoreDuo* and Core2Duo** laptops... and I can confirm that it definitely DOESN'T like Vista (certainly not the 64bit*** version) and I think it throws a wobbly on the 32 bit version too, even in compatiblity mode due to lack of VB compatibility... I guess I could see if the source code is still on that link and try to recompile in VB under Vista, but i'm uber-rusty on VB!!

Also, I've had probs getting it to recognise the SD card drive on my IBM X40 (Centrino, 1.5Gb RAM, XP-SP3) - result - it just crashes straight away.... I think this is due to the funky drivers that are otn here to get the non-SDHC reader to pick up SDHC cards Real shame since that's the only laptop that I've got where the PSU will plug into the car's 12V

If you're using XP, the most likely reason for it not working is that you're running a newer version of VB, maybe installed by something else....

Several uses have reported problems during the installation and, in an attempt to rule out problems with the MSI Wise installer, I have produced a standard installer using Microsoft's own Package and Deployment wizard that ships with VB6....

I have written a couple of simple scripts, the first traverses a set of directories, and generates an m3u files for each in the root, renaming the files and directories to hex values so not inpeach the 64 char limit. It also creates an undo file if you want to rename the same set of files back.

If your music is in AAC (unprotected) format I have another script similar to the first which will convert from AAC to MP3 320k

Neither are ideal if you want a "drag 'n' drop" solution but do generate RNS-E compliant extented M3U files for each album which was what I wanted.

Both scripts are written in KixScript which is free and runs on all flavours of Windows inc Vista and 7.

By chance was checking ASN tonight and spotted this thread had been updated!

I haven't worked on the RNS-E MP3 Manager software for some time, although I still operate the SourceForge project and have the source code (which anyone can access). The project didn't really take off in the way I'd hoped; I was hoping other VB6 developers via SourceForge or even ASN would be able to help out, but that hasn't happened. One of the problems is that I wrote in VB6, not the most modern language these days (although I still find it stupidly easy to use), and maybe it's time to migrate it to .NET or other platforms like Java.

I am keen to resurrect it assuming I can find the time - difficult right now with a 4 year-old son and a second due next April, but at least if some of the installation bugs were sorted it would mean more people could use the software.

Will spend some time digging up the source code. If anyone here has VB6 experience, or even a view on how the project could be advanced, raise your hand!

By chance was checking ASN tonight and spotted this thread had been updated!

I haven't worked on the RNS-E MP3 Manager software for some time, although I still operate the SourceForge project and have the source code (which anyone can access). The project didn't really take off in the way I'd hoped; I was hoping other VB6 developers via SourceForge or even ASN would be able to help out, but that hasn't happened. One of the problems is that I wrote in VB6, not the most modern language these days (although I still find it stupidly easy to use), and maybe it's time to migrate it to .NET or other platforms like Java.

I am keen to resurrect it assuming I can find the time - difficult right now with a 4 year-old son and a second due next April, but at least if some of the installation bugs were sorted it would mean more people could use the software.

Will spend some time digging up the source code. If anyone here has VB6 experience, or even a view on how the project could be advanced, raise your hand!

Click to expand...

Cheers Fella. Although I was getting that error on installation, the application itself still appeared operational, creating m3u files etc although I haven't actually used it properly yet.

Look forward to some updates

2010 Audi A6 Avant 3.0 TFSI

Rosstech HEX-USB+CAN Owner with VCDS 10.6 (Happy to help anybody out in the North West)

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